“Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying And I'm crazy for loving you”
Not only does this song fit with this month’s theme of Villain/Victim but it is also a song I heard my grandmother sing probably hundreds of times over the years. Today would have been her 108th birthday. She passed away in 1996 days before her 80th birthday.
My grandma Rhodes or Mamma, as anyone who knew her called her, loved music. She would break out in song at any given moment and could not fall asleep without her rotation of albums. She would play 3 or 4 a night with such artists as Elvis, Slim Whitman and of course Patsy Cline. I cherish every moment spent with her while I was growing up and miss her so much.
I absolutely love that Connor has her knack for breaking out in song randomly as well.
I have been thinking about her a lot here lately, as well as my maternal grandmother, hard not to as we watch woman losing their rights and we go back in time to when my grandmothers would have been young. My grandmother was born in 1916, married in 1942 to someone 16 years her senior. They had 7 children born in 1942, 1943, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952 and 1954. This song came out in 1961 when my grandmother would have been 45 years old and my grandfather would have been 61. I can’t help but wonder what was going on in their life/marriage that would have made her relate to this song so much or was it a song that came along later in her life but reminded her of someone before my grandfather. I obviously was not around for the majority of my grandparents’ marriage but what I do remember was it was not something I would have strived to attain. I used to wonder why she stayed with someone all those years and as I got older, I realized there were not as many options for woman then as there were for me. To try to put it all in perspective, when I was little and would visit her in the summers we would take flowers to the graves of my dad, my uncles and my grandfather, which I always thought was so sweet. When I got older, I found out that there was a little more to the flowers on my grandfather’s grave, my grandma told me he would never allow her to have fresh flowers in the house while he was alive so this was her way of giving him the finger for the rest of her life.
I realize this is all over the place but I just let my thoughts guide the way today and as all kinds of things came flooding back this is where I ended up.
Larry’s Perspective:
I'm glad Shannon has these memories and is sharing them. I honestly did not get to spend any time with her. But I can tell by her love and taste for music we would have gotten along just fine.
I wanted to share a little bit from Wikipedia on this song because it illustrates how important it is to American culture in several ways.
"Crazy" is a song written by Willie Nelson and popularized by country singer Patsy Cline in 1961. Nelson wrote the song while living in Houston, working for Pappy Daily's label D Records. He was also a radio DJ and performed in clubs. Nelson then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, working as a writer for Pamper Music.
Through Hank Cochran, the song reached Patsy Cline. After her original recording and release, Cline's version reached number two on Billboard's Hot Country Singles, also crossing to the pop chart as a top 10 single.
Cline's version is considered a country music standard and, in 1996, became the all-time most played song in jukeboxes in the United States. "Crazy" was covered by many artists; different versions reached the charts in a variety of genres. The song was featured in television shows, while many publications have included it in their all-time best songs lists. The Library of Congress inducted Cline's version into the National Recording Registry in 2003.
Ghost of a Chance 